Foxe’s Book of Martyrs

Description

By John Foxe (1516-1587). One of the most influential authors of the English Reformation, Foxe was an English historian and martyrologist, who studied at Brasenose College, Oxford, and Magdalen College School. By the time he was twenty-five, he had read the Latin and Greek fathers, the schoolmen, the canon law, and had acquired great skill in the Hebrew language. Foxe resigned from his college in 1545 after becoming a Protestant and thereby subscribing to beliefs condemned by the Church of England under Henry VIII. Foxe would personally witness the burning of William Cowbridge in September 1538.

In the forty years between 1547 and his death, he produced some forty works in English and Latin. His classic, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, was originally published in 1554. It was an account of the martyrs of Western history but emphasizing the sufferings of English Protestants and proto-Protestants from the fourteenth century through the reign of Mary I. With particular emphasis on England and Scotland, it includes accounts of the sufferings of believers under the Catholic Church. The book went through four editions in Foxe’s lifetime and a number of later editions and abridgements. Facsimile Paperback. 424 Pages.